


You came back for me?

by gallpall



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness, The snark is genetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallpall/pseuds/gallpall
Summary: A brief Wake-in-Cyth POV of Ch. 50.
Relationships: Pyrrha Dve/Wake | Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead
Comments: 23
Kudos: 39





	You came back for me?

You are about to die from boredom or from aggravation or from both, none of which seem like very valiant ways to go out.

You have _already_ died (again) not hours ago, in the arms of a dead dandy with a needle whose rules had somehow rewritten yours at the last possible moment, and now his ghost and all the others are undoubtedly drowning in that crumbling mire. It did not have to be that way. You gave them their choice. In all your years of domineering over frothy pockets of muck you have never been so rudely dismissed from your own haunts, but you do not even have the luxury to be fully pissed about all that now—

—because you are once again condemned to play by the rules of John Gaius’ galactic fairytale which, as far as you are concerned, is the most rancorous boil to ever exist outside of the River. The one entity who made this realm worth visiting is finally submerged and soon to be languishing in Hell where she—he— _they_ —belong. It is going to be difficult (but not impossible) to sneer down at those two from Heaven knowing full well that your arrival up there is the result of being waterboarded to death by Gaius’ bad sense of humor.

Heaven aside, you can think of a million places you would rather be, a million torments less excruciating than those haloed eyes looking into yours and that lying mouth spouting smug, stupid things like ‘ _well done, that’s the classic,'_ congratulating you for the dud you had been so diligently trying to let go of for two entire decades.

You have two gleaming needles trained on you: one held by a pinkish witch you recently had the pleasure of torturing, and the other by a lich even more atrocious than you could have pictured him, a man who looks like the personification of posh if posh had taken a shit in an alley and then that shit had been desiccated by the sun for a myriad. 

You have told your side of the fucking story, and if John Gaius tries one more time to berate or interrogate _you_ instead of confronting his misbehaving children then you are going to use every bit of residual energy left in the corpse you inhabit to rock this chair onto one of their rapiers.

“I mean, it’s appalling, but it would never have worked—”

And thank fuck the other man cut him off.

“Gideon?”

Even as you turn to the doorway you believe it a sorry attempt at a distraction. You know one _Gideon_ to be occupied with his own long-delayed death; know he has been left behind to fight alone while the rest of his family has a terribly overdue conversation about _honesty_.

And as for the other _Gideon_ , some part of you hopes that even your brain-dead (also actually dead) adolescent could not possibly be stupid enough to wander into that room. If she had any of your sense she would have taken your dismissal as permission to drink herself to one final death on the other side of the station.

As this last contender enters the room you realize they aren’t really a _Gideon_ at all—and that, in all ways but literal, you are saved.

It is the sunglasses, because you remember smiling once as you lifted them from that Lyctor’s face on some hot, humid planet maybe thirty years ago, when Pyrrha had worn them not as a disguise but to shield from the sun’s rays—and because she thought they suited her. The memory makes the pitiful dead lips you are wearing twist into a smile that burns and does not feel remotely right, but you do not suppress it, because you want her to see _you_ right now.

It is the walk, because for every fond memory of Gideon the First approaching you with deadly intent, you cannot recall him ever assuming such a confident strut or a drawing a _gun_ on you. That was her style.

It is the fuzzy red hair that has not been shaved in probably a week now—he had always been so ritualistic maintaining it in the past. (She told you why that was, once.) It is the confirmation that those last bits of his consciousness had been fading fast ever since you had endeavored to end the two of them in the incinerator. Perhaps he could not even recall this simple ritual before the end. Perhaps he could not even recall her.

It is the new and horrible scars on his face, because you recognize this as the face of a dead man. You recognize that he must finally be gone and that even though she did not have to, she has climbed out in his shell to see you, to _free_ you one more time before she can end it and join him in Hell.

You think for a millisecond that, were these decaying hands not so cruelly restrained, you might reach out in gratitude to touch that face. If you had _more_ than a millisecond you might attempt to say her name—

A millisecond is all she offers you.

The gun presses. The body slumps.

You hit the ground running.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! This was a quick speculative exercise and also Very self indulgent.  
> Thanks also to my friend [@liveonthesun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liveonthesun/pseuds/liveonthesun) for the prompt :)


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